P5B with IDE & SATA Hard Drives

[Cajun20th]

Here is my System,

Asus P5B
2 Western Digital IDE Hard Drives (Primary Master and Primary Slave)
1 Western Digital SATA Hard Drive (3200AAKS)

My system has been working for about 9 months without any problems. During the past two weeks I've noticed the performance on my SATA hard drive was slowing down. Then about four days ago, Windows XP didn't even have my SATA drive listed in 'my computer'. Over the next four days, when i would log on, sometimes I had drive E (the sata Drive), others times i didn't have it. Over the weekend I decided to locate and fix my problem. I found that one of my case fans went out (the one cooling my Hard Drives). When I took out the hard drive, I noticed it was very hot. I removed it from the case and left it out for about an hour. I replaced the case fan and reinstalled my hard drive. Now when i boot up my computer, I noticed that the bios recognizes my two IDE drives, but then the screen goes black and then displays, "Primary Hard Drive Failure" Press f1 to continue. When i press F1, it continues to boot up, even getting to the windows XP startup screen, then a quick flash of the 'blue screen of death', then the computer restarts. If I unplug the SATA cable from the hard drive, then everything works fine. I tried updating my bios, setting the bios to defaults (like it was privious to my problems) still with no luck. Any ides how to make the BIOS recognize my SATA drive as only a slave?

 

[4745454b]

Its SATA, there is no master or slave. If the drive was randomly dropping out of the bios, its probably dead. See if you can RMA it back to WD and get a new one.

 

[Cajun20th]

That's the strange thing, the bios recognizes the drive, but for whatever reason, once it get to the SATA drive of the POST, it gives me the "Primary Master Hard Drive Failure" message.

 

[4745454b]

Then it might have died? That would be a failure in my book.

 

[notherdude]

Its SATA, there is no master or slave. If the drive was randomly dropping out of the bios, its probably dead. See if you can RMA it back to WD and get a new one.

agreed, but before you give up on it try a different cable and a different sata port - just don't use the 'raid' enabled port which is mraked as such.

 

[Cajun20th]

but if it died, wouldn't the BIOS not recognize it? I ordered an External case for internal SATA drives. I will try to see if it works that way.

 

[notherdude]

but if it died, wouldn't the BIOS not recognize it? I ordered an External case for internal SATA drives. I will try to see if it works that way.

Maybe, maybe not, hard drives can die partial deaths for sure, sometimes they get recognized but not recognized correctly because they are messed up inside, but try it on a different port and cable - these can and do go bad also and lead to intermittent hard drive issues.

BTW. Drives can get plenty hot and still work fine, it's better for them to not to get so hot of course, all things equal, but they are not terribly delicate to a little heat.

 

[Cajun20th]

OK, I have found that my SATA drive was toast and replaced it with a Western Digital 1TB My Book external hard drive with three connections (USB, Firewire, and ESATA). The first time I connected the drive, i connected it to the ESATA port on the back of the case. Everything worked fine. I went into windows XP SP3 Disk Management and created a partition for the full drive and formatted the partition. After a reboot, my motherboard no longer recognizes the drive when i have it hooked up via the ESATA port. When i connect it using the USB port everything works fine, just a lot slower than ESATA. Is there something I need to change in the BIOS settings in order for me to use it via the ESATA? I am really confused with this and any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[4745454b]

Double check your bios. Look for any eSATA options. I'm afraid I've never played with eSATA, so I can't really help you here.

 

[Cajun20th]

I found on a different forum that some external hard drives have problems with the ESATA cable connecting properly in the back of the drive. The rubber shielding by the male plug of the esata cable hits the frame of the case on the external hard drive before making a good connection. I read that you should 'shave' the rubber down until you can plug in the connector all the way into the drive. I tried this at home and it works just fine. Just thought I would pass this along to possibly help someone else out.

 

[4745454b]

Weird, thanks for the tip.